03/18/2002 "Kirby papers 'nasty innuendo' "

Kirby papers 'nasty innuendo'
(AAP)

GREENS Senator Bob Brown has dismissed Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan's evidence against High Court judge Michael Kirby as vicious and nasty innuendo.

Senator Heffernan has sent documents to NSW police to back up his claims in Parliament last week that Justice Kirby used his commonwealth car inappropriately, trawling for rent boys in a Sydney red light district.

Newspapers said the new information, which police hope to receive today, includes a statutory declaration from a former male prostitute who was found to be an unreliable witness against solicitor John Marsden.

The other evidence is a commonwealth car job sheet from April 1994, which shows a trip to Rose Bay from the Sydney Law Courts that took 50 minutes.

Around 11pm that night, the car returned to Rose Bay and went to Darlinghurst, with a notation on the job sheet showing the judge did not travel in the car.

Senator Brown said there could be a whole range of legitimate reasons for the trip and said if there was any more substantive evidence against Justice Kirby, the Government should present it.

"One can think of a hundred scenarios which would fill the reasons for those trips," he told the Nine Network today.

"It's all a pretty vicious and nasty innuendo that's proceeding here as far as I can see and it's bringing Australian politics and Australian public life down to a new low level that I think most Australians are beginning to get sick of."

Senator Brown yesterday produced legal advice showing Prime Minister John Howard had breached parliamentary rules when he read out part of a letter from Senator Heffernan in Parliament.